What the Glass Holds

The window keeps no record of what passed through it— only the oil from a child's hand persists, a smear of almost-touching that outlasts the touch itself.

Inside, the lamp throws its one yellow argument against the coming dark, and loses, slowly, the way all honest things lose.

Someone has left a glass of water on the sill. It holds a coin of light, wobbling, then spills it without grief when a truck passes.

We call this stillness. We call this ordinary. As if the water doesn't know it has been borrowed from the sky.